Curriculum Development Process

Development of the Mission & Vision Statement

Following recommendations from the Chronicle of Higher Education’s (2018) report on reforming general education, the first step in our curriculum reform process was to consider “the big picture” -- the mission and vision of the College and University.

To inform the development of a mission and vision statement for the general education program in the College, our committee reviewed several resources, including: (1) the Middle States accreditation standards and Lehigh’s own Middle States self study, (2) the vision statement for college learning from the AACU’s LEAP Initiative (Liberal Education and America's Promise), (3) William Cronon’s 1998 essay on the goals of a liberal education published in The American Scholar, (4) the work of the Big Look Committee, (5) survey results from the Spring 2018 CAS Faculty Retreat and from our Fall 2020 survey of departments and programs, (6) the general education statements of our peer and aspirational institutions, and (7) the public face of general education at Lehigh. (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4).

Based on this information, we made the following observations and conclusions:

1) The Middle States accreditation standards and the AACU’s LEAP Initiative clearly outline the broad areas of focus of a liberal arts education.

These include (a) knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world; (b) intellectual and practical skills (e.g., inquiry and analysis, critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, quantitative literacy, information literacy, teamwork and problem solving); (c) personal and social responsibility (e.g., civic knowledge and engagement, cultural and global awareness, ethical reasoning and action, foundations and skills for lifelong learning); and (d) the ability to apply the aforementioned knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to complex problems (LEAP Vision for Learning, p. 7).

2) Data from the 2018 retreat and our 2020 survey of departments and programs indicate that Lehigh’s CAS faculty have a common vision for undergraduate education that overlaps with the vision described above.

CAS faculty broadly agree about the value of (a) exploration and self-discovery, (b) breadth of knowledge across disciplines and intellectual traditions, (c) embracing the interconnectedness of diverse fields, (d) the acquisition of intellectual and practical skills (e.g., intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, writing, creative and systematic problem solving), and (e) the ability to apply knowledge and skills to complex problems in the modern world.

3) Analysis of peer institutions shows that the most attractive programs have well defined missions and visions with aligning general education requirements.

Review of Lehigh’s own materials revealed that this is an area where Lehigh could make significant improvement. Our College has not defined an exciting and coherent vision for the general education program and we fail to clearly articulate the rationale for the requirements currently in place.

4) The College could use the University motto to support a compelling and distinctive mission and vision statement.

Lehigh’s official motto is a quote taken from the work of Sir Francis Bacon, “homo minister et interpres naturae”, which can be translated as "humans, servants and interpreters of nature.” This motto reflects the mission that was set at the University’s founding to combine an emphasis on engineering and science with a strong liberal or classical education (see the History and Purpose section of the Course Catalog). We aimed to adapt this mission to the present and future orientation of the College, with due attention to the complex legacy of Bacon and his ideas. Bacon envisioned a comprehensive university, like Lehigh, with basic science, arts, humanities, and social sciences at the center. He also emphasized the value of knowledge, learning, and discovery -- both for their own intrinsic value and for their utility to humankind (see Peltonen, 1996 for an introduction to Bacon’s intellectual significance). By using these and other ideas in Bacon’s work as a starting point, our goal was to develop a distinctive general education vision for the College that connects back to the intellectual roots and original public face of the University.

Building on these observations and conclusions, our committee drafted a mission and vision statement that was shared with the College in November of 2020. We surveyed faculty about the overall favorability of the statement and solicited written feedback. We also discussed the statement and received oral feedback during a November 2020 CAS faculty meeting. The committee later updated the statement based on recommendations from colleagues as well as subsequent decisions regarding the structure and content of the curriculum.

The updated mission and vision statement is provided below. The statement aims to assert the overarching values of a CAS education, to connect with the broader University mission, and to provide a framework for our liberal arts curriculum. We chose language capacious enough for this statement to continue to be meaningful in the face of future revisions to the curricular requirements, and to serve as a forum for respectful debate about the College’s identity, goals, and future. The statement speaks directly to students—our primary constituency—but is designed to address a range of target audiences, including parents and the wider world.

Development of the Curriculum Proposal

The development of the Liberal Arts Curriculum proposal was guided by the core values expressed in the mission and vision statement, and informed by an evaluation of existing successes and challenges.

Evaluation of the Existing Distribution Requirements

Data from the 2018 CAS retreat and our 2020 survey of departments and programs indicated several successes of the existing general education curriculum that the committee considered important to maintain. These include the following: (1) The current system prioritizes student choice and exploration, providing opportunities for students to explore their interests and create an individualized program of study. (2) The distribution requirements facilitate exposure to diverse disciplines and intellectual traditions, accomplishing the breadth that is valued in a liberal arts education. (3) The first-year writing sequence and junior-year writing intensive requirement reflect a commitment to writing as a critical part of a liberal arts education. (4) The curriculum includes a successful, inquiry-driven first-year seminar program that supports students in the transition to college. (5) More broadly, under the current system, students have the opportunity to take high-quality courses taught by faculty scholars who are leaders in their fields.

Faculty feedback also highlighted several areas for improvement in the current system: (1) The language of “distribution requirements” implies that the reason for taking a course is just to check a box, promoting students and advisors to view these courses as requirements to “get out of the way". (2) Distribution requirements reinforce traditional disciplinary boundaries, failing to promote interdisciplinarity and energize students around contemporary questions and challenges that transcend disciplines. (3) The system permits haphazard student choices and an education that is lacking in key domains, including engagement with both the interpretive/literature-based and creative/expressive forms of humanistic inquiry, and serious consideration of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability. (4) Under the current system, student success in writing and quantitative reasoning is variable with insufficient attention given to building these critical intellectual skills.

1) To convey the value and purpose of a liberal arts education.

An overarching goal of the curriculum design process was to use the curricular structure and its descriptive language to effectively convey the value and purpose of a liberal arts education. By being transparent about the goals underpinning each curricular component, we help students to become intentional about their education, maximize their learning in each course, and to recognize how the liberal arts curriculum will prepare them for success after college. In particular, by articulating the rationale for each requirement and signaling what each requirement helps students to accomplish, we move away from a “check the box” strategy to a more engaged and deliberate approach to education.

2) To promote intellectual breadth through engagement with approaches and tools used by scholars across disciplines.

The liberal arts tradition includes a deep commitment to intellectual breadth. Each academic discipline provides a unique lens through which we can understand the world. Scholars and practitioners in distinct disciplines frame questions differently, utilize different sources of knowledge, and practice different methods of inquiry. These include interpretive and analytical modes of inquiry, creative and expressive forms of inquiry, and scientific approaches to studying both the social and natural worlds. Through a liberal arts education embracing disciplinary breadth, students can see more clearly what different academic disciplines have to offer and how their distinct lenses add value towards understanding our world.

3) To modernize by promoting engagement with questions and challenges that span disciplines.

There is a growing trend within higher education to create curricular opportunities that engage students with questions and issues that challenge them to understand the complexity of the modern world. A hallmark of a liberal arts education is the capacity to think broadly, creatively, and in an integrative way about grand questions and challenges that are fundamental to humanity. Importantly, making headway in understanding and addressing the world’s most pressing questions and challenges requires a multidisciplinary lens. Thus, a key priority guiding the curriculum development process was to engage students with big questions and contemporary challenges from multidisciplinary perspectives.

4) To ensure a robust commitment to cultivating writing and quantitative reasoning as critical intellectual skills.

The College provides a rich context for students to develop a portfolio of cross-disciplinary intellectual skills. The ability to write clearly and effectively is among the most fundamental of academic skills and is critical for advanced work in all fields. Quantitative reasoning, or competency and comfort with numerical data, is also a critical 21st-century college learning outcome that is important for success in the workplace, in the sciences, and generally in everyday life. Writing and quantitative reasoning should be practiced extensively, at all levels of instruction, and across the curriculum in order to cultivate strong writing and quantitative literacy among Lehigh graduates.

5) To design a thoughtful mechanism that encourages encounters with issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability in the curriculum.

A liberal arts curriculum offers a powerful opportunity to educate students about the role of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability in societies both past and present. A key priority of the committee was to develop an intentional approach to addressing these issues in the curriculum in a way that was informed by scholarship and faculty experts, consistent with our College values, and likely to provide the most meaningful and transformative learning for students.

Additional Decisions about Curricular Structure and Content

The Study of Social Difference within the Curriculum

The Lehigh Liberal Arts Experience infuses the critical study of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality throughout the curriculum. In particular, by fulfilling the objectives of “Exploring Diverse Disciplinary Perspectives and Tools” and “Tackling Big Questions & Contemporary Challenges from Multidisciplinary Perspectives”, students will inevitably encounter a series of courses that explore these central categories of social, cultural, and political analysis, as well as other important forms of difference and power.

This approach was intentional. The committee adopted it as an alternative to isolating the study of social difference in a single course requirement or set of requirements, which in our view risks provoking resistance and conferring a misleading sense of alterity upon these areas of study. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality are enduring and central objects of analysis in social, cultural, and political scholarship. Their importance is equally reflected in the interests and activities of the Lehigh faculty and plans for its development. In this context, amplifying attention to artistic, humanistic, and social-scientific inquiry in the liberal arts curriculum, with particular attention to problems that require multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary thinking, emerged as the best approach to ensuring that all undergraduates in the College acquire a critical grasp of the role of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality in societies both past and present.

In adopting an approach that intentionally infuses learning about social difference and power across the entire curriculum, the committee has been guided at every stage by both the existing scholarly literature and input from scholarly experts on the Lehigh faculty. We have gathered colleagues from multiple departments with research and teaching expertise in these topics in focus group conversations, email discussions, and informal dialogues. These conversations have all emphasized that the most meaningful and transformative learning for students occurs when they encounter themes of social difference, equity, and inclusion throughout their education. We believe that this approach will be a hallmark of the new Lehigh Liberal Arts curriculum. The curriculum will utilize, build upon, and create incentives for the expansion of the slate of existing courses and Lehigh faculty already devoted to the study of these topics.

Instructional Approaches

Strategies for instruction include course level formats such as lecture, seminar, flipped classroom, etc. Within a course, faculty may choose to implement a variety of activities such as small group discussion, working problems, demonstrations, field trips, etc. Considered together, these choices comprise “how” a subject is taught, in contrast to describing the intended learning goal. We acknowledge and applaud the superb range of engaging experiences already at Lehigh, from inquiry-based and student-led seminars to experiential activities in the performing arts, maker-spaces, and field courses.

In designing the curriculum, the committee focused on the blend of subjects and cross-curricular themes and not on instructional methodologies. We viewed the top-down prescription of pedagogical approach as undervaluing faculty expertise and potentially creating resistance to other aspects of the curriculum. The committee encourages departments and programs to consider the full range of instructional approaches, particularly when developing new courses.

Scholarly Resources

The committee reviewed scholarly research on a wide range of general education topics. We encourage you to peruse the list of document folders below, particularly if you have an interest in a specific subject area. The documents consist of published research papers, technical notes and a few opinion columns.

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